[Spivak]

Doing the least you can at work is also called "meeting expectations." Why are you going above and beyond to create value you won't capture?

If someone is willing to pay you a lot for not doing much and is happy with your output then what's the issue? People working multiple jobs is typically a sign of hard work. They could be playing Xbox instead but they chose more work. Spinning working on things that no one asked you to do to fill the free time can't be better for you or the economy than doing useful work somewhere else.

Like yeah sure it's probably a violation of your employment contract or whatever but ignoring the rules is practically the west coast hacker spirit. And ethically I have no issue with it at all. You can pay for hours or output, when I meet my output goals the excess hours are mine back.

Folks will unironically joke "the reward for hard work is more work," put zero additional thought into it, work hard and wake up 10 years later burnt out, getting 2% raises, with their job consuming their whole lives.

[vehementi]

I am kinda tiring of seeing this rationalization. Don't you see, it's on the company to fire you if your productivity is low! Feel free to do nothing or as little as possible! That's such trash.

If you're in software and are being honest you know we are not being paid for our output. Where are you working where the understanding is that if you get assigned a task for the week and finish it in one hour, it is common knowledge between you and your management chain that you have the rest of the week off and the CEO says "nice, see ya!"? Where your team says the same and doesn't look at you sideways? No, we aren't being paid for output, we are being paid for being as productive as we can (sustainably) for the generally accepted hours (9-5 or whatever your company says), and continually improving our skills. There is a general extreme difficulty to measure and track and enforce that (because as we all know, estimation is hard and shit happens) which is where trust comes in and why companies are so vulnerable to people working less and lying about it -- it's super difficult to verify.

[Spivak]

> it's on the company to fire you if your productivity is low

That's not what I'm saying at all, I'm saying that if your company is happy with your level of output and it's in line with the rest of your teammates then why would they fire you? On principal? I absolutely work 20-25 hour weeks most weeks and I just got the highest marks on my performance review, a bonus for it, and a promotion last year. Why in god's name would I work harder? What could I possibly gain by setting the bar higher for myself? My employer is extremely happy with the value/$ they get out of me and I'm extremely happy with the work life balance it affords me.

And my team doesn't look at me sideways, folks duck out early afternoon all the time. My department doesn't even schedule meetings after 3pm because people will be gone. And I can't speak for other teams but my direct manager has a rule to not even bother putting in PTO if it's less than two consecutive days off. And my work bestie does 2-3 hours of away-from-desk charity work during the day and he's our resident 10x developer. I realize where I work is essentially a unicorn of sanity that actually believes in work smarter not harder but it's hard to look at other workplaces and say we're the crazy ones.

You are nonetheless right that it's an informal policy that our CTO/CEO look the other way on but it's hard to argue that it isn't incredible for retention.

[mckn1ght]

Wanted to chime back in to say I agree with you here and on your previous reply.

I should’ve been clearer but I was talking about if the resting/vesting is endemic. Yes, there are always going to be people who will skate by as easily as possible. Hard to avoid completely in a gold rush, but I do believe that a company with better culture can suss it out better.

I do think there’s a limit to how much more work should be taken on once you finish planned tasks, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything either. People saying that are, like you said, just rationalizing their own lazy/exploitative attitude.

It’s perfectly reasonable to expect someone to try to get ahead, and keep a company as competitive as possible, if they’re able to finish tasks faster and still staying within a healthy set of working hours. Nobody is asking for 80 hour weeks here. 20 is just unreasonable as 80 when you’re making a ”full time“ tech salary.

If you’re vesting, it’s in your best interests to stay competitive. Otherwise you’re riding on your coworkers’ coattails. All while probably complaining about the ultracapitalism of the C-suite. They’d step into their shoes in a heartbeat.

[johnnyanmac]

>I do think there’s a limit to how much more work should be taken on once you finish planned tasks, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything either. People saying that are, like you said, just rationalizing their own lazy/exploitative attitude.

You can call it rationalizing and exploitative, I can call it tit for tat on a skewed power dynamic. I've never been rewarded and have in fact been punished for taking the initiative, so I learned to just lay low. I'm laid off either way, what's the point?

>if they’re able to finish tasks faster and still staying within a healthy set of working hours.

spoiler: it's never a healthy set of hours. You're describing a just world and I've seen those same 80 hours workers laid off after draining themselves dry as well. Loyalty isn't rewarded.

>Nobody is asking for 80 hour weeks here. 20 is just unreasonable as 80 when you’re making a ”full time“ tech salary.

if you want hours, pay hourly. It won't fix the issue here, but the whole point of salary is that you trust workers to be available in working hours and get assigned tasks done, not have a but in a seat for X hours a day. If someone finishes in 20 hours I don't see why they are "rewarded" with twice the work for not twice the pay. You can increase their workload if you want in the next meeting, but well: that's a good "reward" huh?

>If you’re vesting, it’s in your best interests to stay competitive. Otherwise you’re riding on your coworkers’ coattails.

I'm much closer to someone working 80 hours than a vester, to my dismay. But as a hot take: not every software company needs top engineers. If you can coast and make widgets for 20-30 years, that's fine. Not everyone is going to have the same passion for their career. But passion doesn't correlate with productivity, that myth needs to die.

[mckn1ght]

> the whole point of salary is that you trust workers to be available in working hours and get assigned tasks done

This is becoming a popular framing but I see no reason it should be accepted as ground truth. If you’re paid a full time salary, you can be reasonably expected to actually do work, full time.

> If someone finishes in 20 hours I don't see why they are "rewarded" with twice the work for not twice the pay.

Because you already signed a contract saying you’d get paid X on a full time basis. Maybe try adding a doubling clause to get to 40 hours per week and see how it’s received.

I’m not even opposed to taking down weeks. I do that. Sometimes life gets in the way, someone’s you feel less motivated. I’m not talking about sick/PTO, I’m acknowledging that nobody can fire on all cylinders all the time. I also have weeks where I am on fire and get a lot done because I just want to.

But it seems to me that if this happens:

> You can increase their workload if you want in the next meeting

You’d be upset, or deceitful, in order to maintain your half-time effort always and forever, which I don’t think is ok. Someone above mentioned working second jobs, which yes, is working hard, I’ve done it, but if it’s being hidden from someone that thinks you’re working full time, that’s not ok. In fact it distorts market expectations with invisible parameters. It makes it worse for everyone else.

It sounds like your work situation sucks right now, I get that, I’ve worked bad jobs. But I think you would be wrong to carry such a cynical and jaded mindset into a place that actually respects you and wants to work together. Granted those are very hard to find, and in any company of more than like 20 people you are guaranteed to run into an asshole and the best you can hope for is to find a little oasis of a team within. Just don’t take advantage of that team if you’re ever lucky enough to find it.

[johnnyanmac]

>but I see no reason it should be accepted as ground truth.

Even if you ignore the moral reasons, it's for logistical reasons I just explained. I don't know why it's expected that your best workers will do their best work while being paid the same as "good" workers. Companies promote/bonus less and can layoff at any time, so there's in fact negative incentive for the best workers to do their best. They will either coast at some point or get snatched up by someone else (another aspect which companies accept for asinine HR reasons. Again, no retention budget, healthy hiring budget).

>Because you already signed a contract saying you’d get paid X on a full time basis.

No, I signed a contract saying I'd be paid X bi-monthly/fortnightly with expected working hours and some arbitrary standard of performing well. I can dig out my contract if you want the exact wording, but there's no expectation of "hours worked" on a salaried position. That's the whole benefit of salary; if I need a shorter day/day off I don't get dinged for hours not worked.

>You’d be upset, or deceitful, in order to maintain your half-time effort always and forever, which I don’t think is ok.

And I'd be upset to get more responsibilities for the same pay. I just see it as tit for tat. If companies incentived best workers somehow (i don't care how, encouraging days off when expected tasks are finished, small bonuses taken into account in review. Anything that doesn't try to put down other workers at the same time) then I'd sympathize more. But as I said that retention mindset has been slipping.

>Someone above mentioned working second jobs, which yes, is working hard, I’ve done it, but if it’s being hidden from someone that thinks you’re working full time, that’s not ok.

Depends on the working hours. Moonlighting =/= having a second job. I have some nightly freelance work I do after hours and that should not be looked at by my employees because it's no longer their time.

I don't approve of overlapping jobs in the same time slot (and frankly, that'd be a disaster to try in my industry) but I also don't think it's the most absolute evil strategy if you can choose more lax (likely non-tech) companies. I've even thought about two part time jobs myself, but tech part time seems extremely rare, for the extremely in demand.

>It sounds like your work situation sucks right now, I get that, I’ve worked bad jobs.

Well, I was laid off twice in 8 months, out of a job for 7 months (3 by choice) until I grabbed a part time role by complete luck, and am still looking for a full time job in a shitty market where 80% of my recruiter calls don't even get to a hiring manager, likely because I'm in that weird "between 5-10 years experience" in a market where large studios are on hiring freezes and small new scrappy studios want someone with a little more experiene than me (or Idk, maybe a lot. Maybe there's more 15-20 YOE out in the deep than I expect).

By this point I'm just thinking about taking some blue collar job and riding this year out because I'm so tired of interview calls going nowhere. I can frame the part time work to cover my gap so that's not an issue. So yes, to say I'm extremely biased is an understatement.

But I'll have you know that all my ire comes from management and above. I've loved pretty much every team I worked with in the day to day, and I've been blessed in that regard to have minimal (employee) office politics given my industry stories. Which is why I describe myself closer to a "80 hour work weeker" (note: I never actually worked 80 hours in a week. More around 65 at worst) to a coaster. I don't want to let my team down and I'm not some hotshot SWE that can do that work in 20 hours anyway.